The altitude is 2,850 meters above sea level. I’m on the rim of the crater at the top of Tequila Volcano, waiting, along with several friends, for the arrival of Sergio Vidal, Sandra Ortiz and Ulises Hernández, who started their long run from the top of El Cerro de Mazatepec early yesterday morning and – with no sleep whatsoever – are about to complete their 120-kilometer trek at any moment.
The Triple Volcano Challenge is an idea I came up with several years ago, to promote the extraordinary geodiversity in the Guadalajara area. The route begins at the top of the scoria volcano of Mazatepec and runs straight through the Primavera Caldera which exploded dramatically 95,000 years ago and ends on the peak of El Volcán de Tequila, a stratovolcano which exploded 200,000 years ago and gave Jalisco its rich obsidian deposits.
Now I am standing atop Tequila Volcano waiting for the first athletes attempting the run.
The sun is shining, but if I sit in the shade for more than a few moments, I need to put on a coat. The beauty of our surroundings is simply overwhelming. On the short walk from the parking area, we stopped a hundred times to look at insect-eating mountain violets (Pinguicula sp.), pine-pink orchids (Bletia purpurea) moss, lichens and mushrooms of all colors and shapes ... without mentioning the tall, exquisitely beautiful madroño trees ... and the moment we step off the cobblestone road, a cloud of grasshoppers forms around and ahead of us.
At 3:30 p.m. my phone rings. “We’re here!” says an obviously joyful Sergio. As we make our way to the meeting point, we find Sergio’s family, which has driven up
the mountain to pick him up. With him is Mary Lerma from Mexico City, who did the first part of the run but dropped out in Teuchitlán due to leg problems and fatigue. “It was fabulous,” she says, “but until now my longest run was only 12 kilometers. Yesterday from Mazatepec we did about 90 kilometers in 22 hours.”
Lerma is happy with what she managed to do. Her hobby, I discover, is “Tower Running,” a sport which involves running up the stairs of tall buildings. “The Torre Latinoamericana has 45 floors,” she says, “and the record for running up to the top is 3.5 minutes.”
At last the three finalists appear. Sergio has not slept a wink in 35 hours, but looks in great shape and willing to submit to an interview.
“It was incredible,” he says. “The Bosque was beautiful. We saw a deer, a huge obsidian deposit and a gorgeous sunset. Then we kept running in the dark until sunrise. We had planned to sleep at Balneario el Rincón near Teuchitlán, but in the end we just didn’t have time, and we headed straight up the south side of Tequila Volcano. It was hard, but my two companions ran the whole distance and demonstrated that you don’t have to be a professional runner to do the Trivolcano.”
The next runner is Sandra Itzel Ortiz, a social worker graduated from the University of Guadalajara. She, too, feels exhilarated after the long run. “Along the way,” she tells me, “Sergio told us that these treks represent three types of encounters: the first with God, the second with yourself and the third with nature. Now I know what he means.”
Again and again, Ortiz said, she experienced feelings of nostalgia, anger and impotence “to see how these beautiful creations of Mother Nature are being destroyed day after day by human beings with special interests. For example, no one remembers that the Cerro de Mazatepec is a volcano and it is being devoured by bulldozers. In the second volcano, the Primavera Caldera, we came upon fences, warnings and keep-out signs. We found tractors plowing hundreds of hectares of deforested fields. Near Tala we came upon the unfinished macrolibramiento (outer Guadalajara ring road) and wondered how many millions of trees were cut down along its path. At last, we came to the Tequila Volcano and what did we find? The whole south side of the volcano is being devastated to create Residencial Tierra de Dioses (a subdivision). We ran through space after space marked Terreno 1, Terreno 2, etcetera, and all we could ask ourselves was how many trees did they cut down to make these lots?”
Ordinary people, Vidal tells me, could do this route walking or maybe in stages. “I already have 15 people signed up for doing it in 2017,” he says.
What surprises me about this event is the lack of people I had imagined would be present at the grand finale. Where’s the Mexican press? TV? Turismo? Where’s the welcoming Mariachi? All I have to offer these indefatigable athletes is water and sandwiches prepared by my wife Susy, great sandwiches though they be.
This makes me admire these runners all the more. I think about the longest-running sport in Mexican history: the pre-Hispanic ball game. It went on from sunrise to sunset and must have been grueling. The objective, however, was not to win, but to play impeccably. This same idea was whispered to me during an indigenous dance I witnessed at San Blas. “The whole point here,” my informant told me, “is to do every paso, every movement, perfectly. There is no prize. The reward is the satisfaction you feel for having done an excellent job.”
With a philosophy like that, the ancient Mexicans didn’t need gold or silver medals to spur them on, and it is heartening to see young people like Sergio Vidal and his friends carrying on a tradition that ought to be the prime motivator of all athletes the world over.